Your brain and body on envy or jealousy The amygdala, insula, and anterior cingulate cortex are active in these emotions, and we experience the social or emotional pain in a way that's similar to physical pain. The sense of threat may send your body into fight-or-flight mode.
It can involve feelings of envy, insecurity, resentment, and suspicion. But while it is a natural instinctive emotion, jealousy can have a powerful effect on your mental health. Feelings of jealousy and envy can often cause anxiety, poor self-esteem, and emotional self-sabotage.
Jealousy is one of those “icky” emotions where it feels gross or wrong simply to feel it in the first place. Unfortunately, this sense of disgust or shame we feel about feeling jealous is exactly the thing that makes jealousy such a difficult emotion to manage effectively.
Research has identified many root causes of extreme jealousy, including low self-esteem, high neuroticism, and feeling possessive of others, particularly romantic partners. Fear of abandonment is also a key motivator.
There is not one root cause for someone's jealous behaviors or feelings, but there are a few reasons why someone might feel this way, including insecurity, past history, or fear of loss. Jealousy can be triggered by these and might create tensions within your relationships.
Jealousy is an emotion reflecting weakness and desperation. Females are predominately associated with emotion, which may be why they are thought of as being more jealous than males. Males are generally associated with “tougher” forms of emotion, such as anger.
Delusional jealousy is a psychotic disorder and should be treated mainly with antipsychotics, while obsessive jealousy resembles obsessive-compulsive disorder and should be treated with SSRIs and cognitive-behavioural therapy.
“Jealousy is the highest form of flattery.”
If you're the target of jealousy, you may feel like someone (usually a partner or friend) is trying to control your life. They might do things such as check up on you, try to tell you what to do (or not do) and how to act, or limit your contact with friends and coworkers.
"Working with a mental health professional to learn to believe you're loved and worthy of love can help you boost your self-esteem and stand up to your inner critic," Wind said. "This may help you to stop being jealous, as often jealousy arises out of low self-esteem."
Crossed arms often signal jealousy or insecurity. "Someone may cross their arms while talking, or if they're seated, they might cross their legs and lock them together tightly," says Megan Harrison, licensed marriage and family therapist and founder of Couples Candy.
Past studies have shown that jealousy peaks in adolescence.
Envy and jealousy also add to stress and anger that are closely tied to several illnesses. Anger has been shown to be a risk factor for heart disease. Also, long-term stress harms the immune system and has been linked with some forms of cancer.
Pathological jealousy, also known as morbid jealousy, Othello syndrome or delusional jealousy, is a psychological disorder in which a person is preoccupied with the thought that their spouse or sexual partner is being unfaithful without having any real proof, along with socially unacceptable or abnormal behaviour ...
Although an individual may present with morbid jealousy, the underlying psychiatric problems may show major illnesses like bipolar mania in up to 15% and schizophrenia 20%, among other diagnoses like depression and alcohol-related disorders. Morbid jealousy may not only be delusional, but also obsessional in nature.
Measures of jealousy
As we described above, delusional jealousy is a psychiatric phenomenon in which an individual has a delusional belief that their spouse (or sexual partner) is being unfaithful [6]. It is also known as morbid jealousy, pathological jealousy, conjugal paranoia, or Othello syndrome [6].
The current research aimed to shed light on why people differ in romantic jealousy. Our findings suggest that people differ in jealousy partly because of genetic influences, but mostly because of nonshared environmental influences.
Unhealthy Jealousy
Eventually, jealous people feel so overwhelmed by their emotions and insecurities that they begin to exert control over their partners. They may resort to financial abuse, verbal bullying, and violence in order to maintain control and alleviate or mask their feelings.
“Studies from around the world have reported that men are more jealous of sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity,” Nicholson explains. “And women are the opposite — they're more jealous of emotional cheating than sexual cheating.”
Jealousy is a “complex of thoughts, feelings, and actions which follow threats to self-esteem and/or threats to the existence or quality of the relationship” (White, 1981, p. 129). According to Pfeiffer and Wong (1989), jealousy construct consists of three dimensions: emotional, cognitive, and behavioral.
While it may seem that jealousy mostly involves how you feel in regard to someone else, it's really our relationship with ourselves that's often the root cause of toxic jealousy. “For many people, the true root of jealousy is insecurity,” says Dr. Albers.
Psychologists generally agree that jealousy is a dis- turbing experience that combines the emotions of anger, anxiety, betrayal, and hurt when one feels that a valued relationship is threatened by a third party.